Last September, reporters at the Toronto Star were contacted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with an offer. If they were interested (and agreed to abide by the ICIJ’s strict stipulations), the consortium would provide them with leaked data — 2.6 terabytes of it — that exposed the inner machinations of the world’s elite and the ways they hide their money from public tax coffers.

The data contained 11.5 million leaked documents from Mossack Fonseca, a global law firm based in Panama. The leak, which has been dubbed “history’s biggest data leak,” revealed the identities of 350 Canadians and numerous world leaders, politicians and celebrities who have used the law firm to create offshore tax haven investments to hide their money in.

The Star, along with over 100 other media organizations including the CBC, have collaborated on the investigation. They are calling it “The Panama Papers.”

Robert Cribb, one of the Star‘s lead investigators into the leak and a Ryerson journalism instructor, stopped by The Ryersonian‘s newsroom to give us a debrief on what has happened so far and what we can expect to see in the coming days.

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If they were interested (and agreed to abide by the ICIJ’s strict stipulations), the consortium would provide them with leaked data — 2.6 terabytes of it — that exposed the inner machinations of the world’s elite and the ways they hide their money from public tax coffers.